It was early on in the morning so there was still some mist hanging over the fields and canal when I jumped from my boat onto the towpath and meandered my way to Tesco in town. I had moored above Hungerford Marsh lock and needed to go to the supermarket to pick up some dinner …
The Whole Roll – 8 frames through a Box Brownie and a mug of strong Coffee. Read More
There’s something magical about the first roll developed in a new camera. The cathartic release of weeks (in this case, a month) of anxiety is almost unmatched (I don’t have kids though, so maybe that will top it). I started taking pictures on my girlfriend’s grandfather’s Pentax K1000 that had been sitting in her childhood …
A Whole Month/Whole Roll – The Olympus 35RC and Ilford HP5+ Read More
This, my first roll of Ferrania P30, black and white negative film, yielded thirty seven exposures. You’ll see here only thirty five. I store my negatives in mylar sleeves – seven rows of five frames each. Foolishly, I cut one frame right in half thinking I’d cut between frames. Luckily I took two shots of that subject. Another frame made the strip just too long to fit in the mylar sleeve, so off it came. There’s no “undo” button in analogue photography, so thirty five frames it is. That’s more than enough to illustrate my first experience with this black and white film.
June 2022 I was documenting the ceremony and spectacle of the Platinum Jubilee celebrations for Queen Elizabeth II. Earlier, while allocating my kit, I had found a roll of Ektar 100, expired in 1992. It was only a 12 exposure roll, so I didn’t have much incentive to use it for anything “general” but I realised I had a specific colour-centric application for the flyover that was scheduled as part of the days programming. I don’t usually work with colour, but have seen and missed flyovers in the past, and the colourful trails against the sky were something I wanted to be sure I had at least a snapshot record of.
I got the camera bug from my parents. Neither of them are professional photographers but both enjoy photography and regularly took me to galleries as a kid. I think I took photography for granted for quite a while due to the abundance of photo books at home and how well my grandma liked to maintain the archive of family photos.
